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Monday 27 November 2017

My Journey to the New York Bar - That pivotal moment


I'm going to take you back to 2014 which was the pivotal moment where my vision opened and my career started to steer in another direction.

During that year I was very dissatisfied with my career. I had already recovered from certain personal issues I had experienced, finally got a decent paying full time job and had a regular steady income to pay my rent, bills and daily expenses and even travel. But I felt restricted. I was dissatisfied because I knew there was more to me and for me than this. I'm not knocking the job or company I was working for at the time, but I reasoned with myself that I didn't go to university, study law and even train as a paralegal just to do admin work.

Although I was paralegaling on the side, it still wasn't enough for me. But I didn't know what to do or where to go. I knew that I didn't want to go back to law school and resume the Legal Practice Course (LPC), which is the course you take before becoming a trainee solicitor in England and Wales, because the course fees were so expensive, around £10,000. I previously had to leave the LPC  half way through due to experiencing homelessness and I was not in a good way emotionally. I was 'ready' to go back and finish what I started, but at the same it was not what I wanted anymore. I was also finding it hard to get a full time job as a paralegal because whenever I had interviews I would be questioned about having a stammer and they (not me) saw it as an impediment for me to work directly with clients; even though I had previously worked in a call centre and as an advisor, and had no issues with that.

So I started paralegaling independently. I found my own clients which were charities, organisations, businesses and individuals. Still it wasn't enough for me. I remember during that year I did a lot of "soul searching". I spent a lot of time alone, figuring out who I was, what I liked, what I was good at and what I wanted.

I would spend time alone at the park, go for walks (this is where my love for nature was awakened), spend time researching online. I was really seeking what to do to. I had a mentor at the time and she is the one who helped me to develop my relationship with God and be defined in my faith because both would be crucial in establishing true happiness, being stable emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially and in all aspects of my life really.

It was June 2014 and I had reached a point where I was ready for a change. I didn't know what exactly but I wanted a change. I remember speaking to God saying that I wanted Him to do something new in me and in my life. I wanted new things. I wasn't specific because I didn't know what to ask for but it's like I just gave everything to Him, in words and in deeds. I was always seeking what to do and one morning while I was cleaning a house (I used to do house cleaning at the weekends to make extra money), I heard the words "redeem the time because the days are evil", while listening to an audio message, which caught my attention. I even remember the room and what part I was cleaning, until this day lol.

After listening to the message I started thinking about what this meant for me and how I could do this.... It was then that an opportunity I had been given but gave up during my second year at university, came to mind....It was now time for me to redeem the time and go back and do that very thing...

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